Thinkpad A31 always boots from 2nd HDD

[Block3r]

I've bought an SATA to Ultrabay 2000 adapter and put a 500GB SATA II WD hard drive into it. During booting, the screen is black and in the upper left corner there is a blinking cursor only. The second SATA drive is visible in BIOS as some weird characters after expanding the "Hard Drive" on the list of devices. I disabled the 2nd drive and rebooted the computer, but this time there was an error "Operating system not found".

Of course without the 2nd drive it boots into the OS properly.
I took out the primary 40GB PATA drive and it was all the time set as master.
The second drive is 100% operational.
Maybe 500 gigabytes is too much and the controller just won't work with this hard drive? I have an 320GB drive too, I will check it as soon as possible.

edit: I removed the primary ATA 40gb drive and tried to just install Windows XP on the 320GB drive inserted in the ultrabay, but the installer said that it can't format the drive and aborted installation.

edit2: I've put the caddy with the second HDD into the Ultrabay 2000 of Thinkpad T20. The BIOS surprisingly recognizes both the drives (primary IDE and the second ultrabay HDD), but the second one appears to be recognized as some strange letters, just like on the A31. The 2nd drive is visible in Windows XP, but can't be even formatted.

[larrystotler]

I've bought an SATA to Ultrabay 2000 adapter and put a 500GB SATA II WD hard drive into it. During booting, the screen is black and in the upper left corner there is a blinking cursor only. The second SATA drive is visible in BIOS as some weird characters after expanding the "Hard Drive" on the list of devices. I disabled the 2nd drive and rebooted the computer, but this time there was an error "Operating system not found"..

If I remember correctly, I had to use the SATA adapter in the Right side bay of the A30p I have. The only way I could use it in the Left Bay was to set the onboard IDE drive to slave.

I believe that the A3x series only has 2 IDE controllers. Therefore, when using a SATA drive(which default to single drive or master), you have to set the onboard drive to slave. I have an A31p as well, but not handy. And, my A30p has started giving me problems with not seeing the onboard IDE drive.

When I used the SATA & the PATA adapters to have 3 drives, I had to set the onboard to slave to get it to work. I THINK the PATA adapter worked in either side because the default for them is cable select. But its been a few years since I've used the A30p full time.